I bought a 1996 Mercedes-Benz E-class last year, it was 21 years old then. It cost me about 2300€ (with a set of winter tires), I did about 15k kilometers in it so far. Pretty much the only servicing I do on it is the non-critical stuff: sunroof, parking sensors etc, but aside of the „vanity stuff” it pretty much runs flawlessly for me. May just be survivor bias of course, but in any case if you don't need 100% reliability 24/7 (in which case you can always take an uber :)) I think it's a really viable choice. Plus buying a used car is afaik more environment friendly than buying a brand new Tesla or Prius or whatever.